To anyone who frets about foreign ownership of American assets, I say that our openness to such ownership is an important source of creative ideas and effort.

Our openness to ideas and efforts from around the globe ensures that each asset in the U.S. — each factory, each plot of land, each retail space, each machine, each worker — is used as productively as possible.

To reduce this openness, therefore, would be to make our economy weaker and ourselves poorer.

[2] And I thought that I was the only person on earth to have a special fondness for my little 2007 essay on The New Yorker‘s weekly caption contest: http://triblive.com/x/pittsburghtrib/opinion/columnists/guests/s_516624.html#axzz2EGzmXTDh